Friday, October 30, 2009

Burger King Augments Dollar Bills



We write about Burger King a lot on this blog, because they seem to share our attitude.

Which is: try everything, build on what seems to work.

We think this is a smart way of operating in the real off line world and we KNOW it is the only way to succeed online.

Not everything Burger King does online is succesful but that does not matter.

They create, try, learn and create again.

They stop doing what doesn't work and improve and develope what does seem to work.

And now they have taken their next little step in augmented reality.

No need to print anything out first, consumers can just hold up a dollar bill in forn of their webcam to see what that dollar will buy them.

Try everything, build on what seems to work.

It's really not that difficult.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Monday, October 26, 2009

Can Kids Teach Themselves?



What happens if you go to some poor area in India where kids don’t speak any English and stick a computer in a wall and leave it there for months?

Dr. Sugata Mitra did exactly that and found a bunch of kids who had taught themselves 250 English words (mostly mispronounced).

Also they were asking him for a faster processor and a better mouse.

Arthur C. Clark once said: “A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be.”

Dr. Mitra’s experiment shows that at the very least a machine is better than no teacher at all.

(actual experiment starts after 7 minutes in the video)

Friday, October 23, 2009

This Proves It: Bloggers Are The New Celebrities






Let's say, you are organzing your fashion show.

Who do you put on first row?

The guy who orders millions of dollars of your designs for his retail chain?

Or a blogging kid who calls himself "Bryan Boy" ?

At the D&G show in Milan, the new order of things was clear for all to see.

Retail buyers and fashion directors had to give up their seats for four bloggers who in internet fashion circles are called "the Fab Four".

These very influential fashion bloggers were not only given front row seats, but also provided with tables and laptops as well.

Need even more proof of the celebrity status some bloggers now enjoy?

Designer Marc Jacobs recently introduced a "Bryan Boy Handbag" for men.

Samsung Gets It



Quick! Think of a mobile phone brand that is totally internet savvy when it comes to advertising...

Apple? Sure, maybe.

But we think Samsung totally gets it.

Not only was Samsung very quick to follow the Youtube Unboxing trend (search for yourself just type unboxing on youtube) and are they succesfully using bloggers to help build their brand, this new youtube video is further proof of their viral awesomeness.

Using Youtube's options to link other videos in a video, this viral Samsung commercial allows viewers to choose their own storylines.

It's relevant, original, cool.

And no it's not Apple.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Pepsi Raw People: Take A Look At Skittles



Pepsi Raw people, we at Lateral Amsterdam love the way you are building the Pepsi Raw brand.

You are doing lots of things totally right.

You are mostly building your brand through sampling and social media instead of traditional advertising.

You even printed your Twitter adress on 1.4 million cans, asking people to tell you what they think of Pepsi Raw.

You are almost doing everything right.

And still you have only 900 followers on Twitter and only about 2000 fans on Facebook.

We feel this is because you are giving no social rewards for people using social media.

Which is a shame because it is so easy.

What people get out of social media isn't just communicating with others.

A large part of it is about getting attention.

Skittles knows this and puts everything (unfiltered by the way) people say about Skittles on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr on their own website, skittles.com.

You should do this and more.

Print Twitter comments (positive and negative) on your cans.

Show real time web communication about Pepsi Raw on electronic billboards.

Print "@estherwaller23 doesn't really like it, but @jeffpulver LOOOOVES it" on London busses.

Show yesterday's most interesting Twitter and Facebook comments on Pepsi Raw in newspaper print ads.

Get more people talking about Pepsi Raw by making sure they get something out of it.

Also, showing people other people are talking about Pepsi Raw makes them curious and makes them want to join the conversation.

Succesfully using social media isn't just about talking and listening.

It is very much about taking and giving as well.

XBox 360 You Have To See It To Believe It



The first minute of this XBox 360 announcement is pretty amazing.

No controls are neccesary to play games because the XBox 360 scans your body.

But the second part of the video is what we find the most interesting.

The XBox 360 allows you to try on different clothes and show them to your friends in real time, so they can advice you on buying it or not.

Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out this can also be applied to home interiors, car test drives, new hair styles etc.

It does take a marketer who is willing to devote a serious piece of his or her time to find out how this new technology works best for his or her particular brand.

Would we be willing to help? O yeah, we love the XBox360 !

Friday, October 9, 2009

Lateral Thinking: Make It Fun



At Lateral one of our all time favorite ad slogans is from light soft drink Diet Tango:

"Diet Tango. You need it because you are weak."

And let's face it, most of us are weak.

We are temped by fatty snacks and sugar filled drinks all day.

And all too often we can't resist temptation and give in.

This wouldn't be such a problem if we got enough exercise, but we don't.

Because we are also tempted by things that allow us to avoid exercise like remote controls, cars and escalators.

So if we want people to get more exercise, how do we do it?

Do we launch a campaign telling people exercising can prevent heart attacks?

Most people already know so that can't be the answer.

Ban cars, remote controls and escalators?

Nice idea, but there would probably be riots.

Some people in Sweden came up with a real nice solution.

They turned regular stairs into piano keyboards which produce a sound when stepped on.

Suddenly climbing stairs becomes very temptative.

Fighting one temptation with another.

There is always a great solution as long as you keep thinking.

Giving up is for the weak.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Lateral Thinking: Change Your Name




With so many talented creative people working in advertising and marketing, it always amazes us how little case of true lateral thinking we see.

There are very few reasons for this, and very many excuses.

One of the most used excuses is that something is said to be a given and can not be changed.

Like media (30"TV), air date, production budget, target audience, distribution, packaging etc.

A lot of times better solutions are not discovered or even ignored because something is not allowed to be changed.

The case of Carribean Airlines proves what a waiste such a way of working can be.

Carribean Airlines is Trinidad & Tobago's national airline and was named BWIA.

Now who is pleased to hear a travelling agent say a name like BWIA?

You have never heard of it so it sounds small.

And because it sounds like a small airline, you start thinking of incompetent pilots and small old rotten planes.

When BWIA hired UK ad legend Dave Trott to do their advertising he didn't say: "Hey, let's do a great TV commercial and make some kick ass posters."

Instead he said: "I have thought long and hard about this and you have to change your name." (and your logo as well)

Fortunately no one told Dave Trott that he could not change the name of the airline.

Carribean Airlines is so much easier to do advertising for than BWIA.

When you hear the name Carribean Airlines you think "Big" and "Reliable" (and probably "nice"and "sunny" as well).

By changing the name Carribean Airlines turned a $60 million loss into a profit in only 4 months.

When you really start thinking lateral things can take of pretty fast.

1 RT, 900K People Reached. We LOOOOOVE Twitter!





Loyal readers of this wonderful, wonderful blog know we (together with our Chicago sister agency The Escape Pod) are helping comedian Rich Fulcher to promote his new book Tiny Acts Of Rebellion.

We are doing this by organising a flash mob and tweeting about it.

We have asked people to change their avatars and hundreds did.

We have asked those hundreds to spread our message and they did.

And when you have hundreds of people doing your tweeting for you, 1 of them might just spread the message to exactly the right person.

Our message reached actor&comedian Steve Agee who tweeted about it.

Mr Agee has 900,000 followers who love to read every tweet from him.

On Twitter it is true that you are only a few people away from every person in the world.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Impossible To Make? All The More Reason To Design It




We saw this concept of a Coca Cola can on a design blog called TheDieline.com

It was made by a young designer by the name of Dzmitry Samal.

The design is certainly remarkable, but so were the comments on the blog from other designers.

You would think designers would argue about wether it fits the Coca Cola brand, or maybe just explain why they thought it was beautiful or ugly.

Think again. All comments from other designers were explaining why such a can can't possibly be manufactured on a mass scale.

Too expensive when it comes to materials, it would take too long compared to a normal can..

We were surprised. We expected most designers to think bigger than that.

Which brings us to the reason why we posted a picture of the Sydney Opera House above the Coca Cola can.

When Danish architect Jorn Utzon presented his design for the opera house, it was impossible to build.

He designed it first and dealt with construction problems later.

Impossible didn't stop him and it shouldn't stop you.

Like the famous sport brand says: Impossible is nothing.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

You Do Not Own Your Brand





Your brand is not yours. It is THEIRS.

And who are THEY?

Well anybody who cares enough to buy it, sell it, blog it, tweet it, flickr it, make a video about it or even do a whole website about it.

THEY for instance, are www.peopleofwalmart.com

A website that posts pictures of funny looking people in line at Walmart. (and by the number of tweets we read about it, is getting very popular fast).

Now put yourself in the position of a Walmart marketer.

Would you laugh? Be afraid of brand damage? Call your lawyers? Or think of it as an opportunity?

Remember the Mentos&Coke videos on Youtube?

Coca-cola called their lawyers.

Mentos worked with Youtube and did a great sales promotion.

When THEY play with your brand let THEM play. (and call your advertising agency to see if you have some fun with it as well).

Never call your lawyers. It's not your brand anymore, those days are gone.

The New Million Dollar Home Page (well sort off)



Remember the Million Dollar Homepage?

Some kid divided his website in tiny little squares and sold the squares to companies, who put their logo in it?

Now, when you saw that you went "why didn't i think of that" didn't you.

So did Jason.

And he actually came up with a great idea: iwearyourshirt.com

Anyone can hire Jason to wear a shirt with their message on it for a day.

Jason will take a picture on it and put it on his blog, make a youtubevideo, put it on facebook and tweet about it on Twitter.

Jason's pricing system is pretty ingenious as well.

January 1st is 1$, January 2nd 2$ ...December 31st is $365.

Jason has sold out 2009 and wore 206 T shirts.

Making him a rough 50.000 dollars. Not a million dollar homepage, but still pretty nice.

Order your Tshirt ad space at www.iwearyourshirt.com

Credit Crunch Couture




At Lateral we love Viktor&Rolf.

Not because they are Dutch (although there may be some chauvinistic pride involved) but because we love great ideas.

And Viktor&Rolf do ideas as much as they do fashion.

We love the idea of creating a beautiful dress with big holes because haute couture is suffering greatly from the credit crunch.

Below are some pictures of their older work.

To us it never goes out of fashion, but maybe that's just because we focus on the idea behind it too much.





Saturday, October 3, 2009

Zork Not Cork





Even though winemakers keep telling us that screw tops are better for the taste of wine than corks, we are conditioned to associate good wines with having a cork.

But cork is getting rare so more and more wine makers are looking for alternatives.

We would advice them to switch to Zork.

It looks like a cork, after popping you can preserve the wine with it and it looks really really good.

Cheers.

Who Cares About Asian Elephants?





Sure, you won't find a lot of people saying: "Asian elephants threatend with extinction? Good, always hated the big grey buggers."

But you won't find a lot of people reaching deep in to their pockets to help either.

So what to do? Start going door to door? Like 20 other charities people have actually heard of before?

Make a TV commercial and hope TV stations will air it for free? Considering the budget it would cost to produce a commercial you would probably be lucky if you can break even.

Fortunately for the Asian elephant, someone came up with a great idea.

112 man sized were made and painted on by various Dutch artists (Corneille being 1 of them).

The Elephants are placed all over Amsterdam for a month to raise awareness and after that they will be auctioned for the cause.

We don't know who came up with the idea, but he/she is definetly no dumbo.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

And...We're Live!



It's no longer a secret.

We (Lateral Amsterdam and our friends at The Escape Pod in Chicago) are helping Rich Fulcher to promote his new book Tiny Acts Of Rebellion.

Wanna see what it's all about? Get in onthe action?

Visit http://fuckoffbigben.com